What’s JAWI’s excuse for acting like a spoiled brat?

The really big question that I have for the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department (Jawi) is why they have been so adamant about pursuing Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz for the past three years.

Three years ago, Jawi raided a Borders store and seized copies of Canadian writer Irshad Manji’s book “Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta”. The book, translated into Malay, was banned but the ban was actually only made six days after the raid.

Unable to charge the owners of store because they only have jurisdiction over Muslims, they decided to charge the store manager, Nik Raina, who was the only Muslim available.

Of course, this was all so dodgy that in December last year, the Court of Appeal ruled that the search and seizure done by Jawi was unlawful. Thank God because Nik Raina could have been jailed for up to two years.

But last week, Jawi, probably feeling very sore from a bruised ego, decided to seek an appeal to the Federal Court against the Court of Appeal’s decision. And so Nik Raina is sucked back into a battle which isn’t even hers.

So why is Jawi pushing on with a case that every single person in Malaysia (and even the court) sees as an injustice? Do they believe that because they are a religious authority, they are divine?

Can’t they live with the fact that they made a big mistake and now they just have to apologise for what has happened and promise never to repeat it? The court isn’t even asking them to pay for damages.

About

My name is Zan Azlee. I’m a MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER, WRITER and a NEW MEDIA CONTENT CONSULTANT. I'm a mass-comm LECTURER at several local universites. I run FAT BIDIN MEDIA. I used to be the SENIOR EDITOR for DIGITAL MEDIA at ASTRO AWANI.